Fuel-card thief stings a haulier
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• A haulage company has been stung for £5,000 after a con-man used one of its fuel credit cards to obtain dery from unmanned bunkering sites over a three-week period.
J Golding (Heavy Haulage) of Gloucestershire says the card was taken from one of its rarely used trucks without its knowledge and was used at truckstops in Avon, Burton and Crick to take up to 700 litres of diesel at a time.
It took three weeks for staff at the firm to discover the card was missing and alert the supplier, Keyfuels of Walsall, through Keyfuels' agent, Bristol-based Thomas Silvey.
Silvey told the company that it would take 48 hours to stop the card, says acting transport manager David Tarling. After the call another 300 litres, worth £96, was stolen.
Keyfuels can stop a card at unmanned sites at midnight if alerted before 14:30hrs that day, says Silvey, but at staffed outlets it does take 48 hours. This is confirmed by Keyfuels, which runs some 260 bunkering sites, 70% of which are automatic.
The Keyfuels cards work without personal identification numbers. At manned sites, drivers' signatures and registration numbers are checked by staff, but at automatic bunkers card holders simply insert their cards and fill up.
Tarling says the card was taken in January from a vehicle which had no regular driver and was about to be sold. It was normally driven by managers to provide back-up at busy periods. Golding, which has been a Keyfuels customer for three years, has now withdrawn fuel cards from 10 drivers. Instead trucks are filled on site and drivers are only issued with cards for long journeys.